The Maltese Parliament has voted into law three cryptocurrency and blockchain bills, making Malta one of the most desirable locations for setting up blockchain enterprises.

According to legislative records, the bills, which were introduced to the parliament by Parliamentary Secretary for Financial Services, Digital Economy and Innovation Silvio Schembri, were passed unanimously on Tuesday, June 26, 2018.

The bills-turned-law detail the regulation of ICOs and cryptocurrencies and the process for setting up crypto-based businesses in Malta. The news, which Schembri shared via a tweet, makes Malta the first country to enact such laws. Read more...

As the South Korean government steps up its anti-money laundering (AML) oversight, major crypto exchanges in the country are voluntarily complying while banks are reportedly failing to meet the guidelines for compliance. South Korea has also been discussing ways to boost crypto-related AML measures with the U.S.

Government Concerned About Bank’s AML Compliance

South Korea’s AML directives currently do not apply to cryptocurrency exchanges directly. The government has made banks responsible for monitoring and reporting any crypto-related money laundering activities. Read more...

Over the last year and a half the ICO scene has truly boomed, with all sorts of projects popping up here and there. In the last several months projects that seek to reform the ICO sector as a whole have attracted special interest. Monopoly.live is, undoubtedly, one of such projects. It is a decentralized platform for financing and developing various projects. If you are an investor, there you will find support and will be able to view and evaluate interesting and promising projects. If you are a start-upper, you will gain access to an audience and finances!Why is the platform decentralized? The reason for this is that it makes the project as transparent as possible. All data regarding transactions and deals is stored in a specialized ledger that is accessible to all users of the system. Therefore, a model of collective investment gets a brand new realization. Among undeniable benefits of the model the following stand out the most: Full protection of finances both during the investment process as well as in the project’s use of proceeds. The sophisticated process of approval that allows the system to pick the most promising and beneficial for investors projects. A legal support for the ICO. This removes the risk of a third-party influence the price of tokens during the initial token offering. Our platform has its own tokens – MNP. Token holders will gain extra privileges on the platform, will have the ability to invest their tokens in start-ups and take part in voting on projects. Similarly to shares, the more MNP tokens you have, the more important your opinion is when making a decision. The key feature of the platform is providing an opportunity for a project to grow and develop. Because of a special voting feature, any token holder can hold a public vote in order to attract more funds to a project. After this, the project goes through extra scrutiny, following which a new fundraiser round is launched. Following the end of the next stage of fundraising, all accounts are published on an open ledger where anyone can view the whole history of the project’s fundraiser. According to our experts, such a platform allows to solve the following problems: Drastically lowers the risks for investors. This is achieved through a decentralized decision-making process regarding issues related to projects’ development. Increases expansion speed of both existing and new projects. Because blockchain technology is integrated into the fundraiser mechanism, the process of growth and allocation of financial assets boasts a maximum degree of automation. As a result, both scaling expenses and the risk of overspending are much lower. Legalizes income for both investors and start-ups. All accounting expenses are covered by the platform, thus significantly reducing expenses of investors and other players on the market. The project is likely to attract the attention of professionals in cryptocurrency investment, traders and, obviously, start-uppers who seek to raise funds for their project quickly.Read more...

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has taken another step toward trading ERC20 tokens by acquiring decentralized relayer Paradex. ERC20 is the Ethereum technical standard that the majority of initial coin offering (ICO) tokens are based on.

Paradex announced the news on its website today, May 23, 2018, adding that its site will be down temporarily while it works to make the integrations with Coinbase.

Paradex bills itself as a decentralized exchange (DEX), meaning no third party is involved in holding the funds. Instead, users can use the platform to trade ERC20 tokens directly wallet to wallet. Paradex is built on top of the 0x (pronounced “zero x”) protocol. Read more...

Chicago Mercantile Exchange & Chicago Board of Trade (CME Group Inc) announced a partnership with Crypto Facilities Ltd to list the price of ether in real-time dollars. Information from major cryptocurrency exchanges Bitstamp and Kraken will be used to determine the CME CF reference rate. This could be a hint of things to come for the second most popular crypto in the world, including possible US futures.

The China Center for Information Industry Development (CCID) of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in Beijing announced its first monthly Global Public Chain Assessment Index at a recent conference. The platform is designed to offer detailed reviews of global blockchain projects by renowned experts in academia, industry and government bodies.

Previously, the CCID had established the Blockchain Research Institute and the China Ecological Blockchain Alliance, which are assigned to strengthen industry, policy research and blockchain technology. The organizations also provide software research and testing to China’s government. Read more...

Celebrities and fans oftentimes have a unique relationship. On the one hand, celebrities can become annoyed with all the attention – photo after photo, hardly any privacy, sometimes outright stalking – the list seems like it goes on and on. A simple Google search yields some hilarious photos of celebrities and their fans. It’s as if every photo is saying “Please go away.”

On the other hand, some celebrities embrace their platform and use it to better the world. For these celebrities–be they actors, musicians, or other performers–the spotlight isn’t about them, it’s about their fans. They perform not for the money–though it must certainly help–but to bring joy to their many followers. Read more...

Bitfury was one of the first companies built around the process of bitcoin mining, but the startup also now works on private blockchain software. Some would assume this might have a negative impact on the bitcoin-focused aspects of their business. But, while it’s true that the development of private, permissioned ledger systems means there could be less activity on public blockchains over the short term, Bitfury views private blockchains as an intermediate step for governments and other large entities to use public blockchains like Bitcoin. Read more...

By Harsh Agrawal Recently the cryptocurrency world received a jolt of sorts, when several major banks decided to ban the purchases of virtual currency using Credit Cards. Bank of America, Citigroup, Lloyds Banking Group, Virgin Money, JPMorgan have all halted cryptocurrency purchases made on Credit….